The Trump administration has seized the cargo of four tankers it was aiming to transport Iranian fuel to Venezuela, officials said on Thursday as it launched its campaign of maximum pressure against the two heavily sanctioned allies.
Last month, federal prosecutors in Washington filed a civil defiance complaint alleging that the sale was controlled by a businessman, Mahmoud Madanipour, with ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization.
At the time, sanctions experts thought it would be impossible to enforce U.S. law in international waters.
A senior U.S. official told The Associated Press that no military force was used in the seizures and the ships were not physically confiscated. After all, U.S. officials are threatening shipowners, insurers and captains with sanctions to force them to hand over their cargo, which is now U.S.-owned, the official said.
Prosecutors allege that the four ships were transporting 1.1 million barrels of gasoline to Venezuela. But the tankers never arrived in the South American country and were then missed. Two of the ships later reappeared near Cape Verde, a second U.S. official said.
Both officials agreed to discuss the sensitive diplomatic and judicial offensive only if anonymity was granted.
“This is another lie and act of psychological warfare carried out by the American propaganda machine,” Soltani said. “The terrorist #Trump cannot compensate for his humiliation and defeat by Iran with the help of false propaganda.”
It is not clear where the ships – the Bella, Bering, Pandi and Luna – as their cargo are at the moment, but the ship captains weeks ago launched their tracking devices to hide their locations, said Russ Dallen, a Miami-based partner at broker Caracas Capital Markets, which tracks ship movements.
The Bering went dark on May 11 in the Mediterranean Sea near Greece and has not switched on its transponder since, while the Bella did the same on July 2 in the Philippines, Dallen said. The Luna and Pandi were last tracked down when they were together in the Gulf of Oman on July 10 when the U.S. seizure order arrived. Shipping data shows that the Pandi, which also goes through Andy, reports that it has ‘broken up’, if sold, Dallen said.
As Venezuela’s commercial traders increasingly diminished, Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government increasingly turned to Iran.
In May, Maduro celebrated the arrival of five Iranian tankers who supply scarce fuel to reduce shortages that have led to day-long gas lines, even in the capital, Caracas, which normally spares such difficulties.
Despite sitting on the world’s largest raw reserves, Venezuela does not produce enough domestic refined gasoline and has seen overall crude production at its lowest level in more than seven decades amid its economic crisis and the imposition of US sanctions.
The Trump administration has put pressure on shipowners to impose sanctions on U.S. opponents such as Iran, Venezuela and North Korea. In May, it issued a statement urging the global maritime industry to look for tactics to avoid sanctions such as dangerous ship-to-ship transport and the deployment of mandatory tracking devices – both techniques used in recent oil- deliveries to and from Iran and Venezuela.
One of the companies involved in the shipment to Venezuela, the Avantgarde Group, was previously affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard and sought to evade U.S. sanctions, according to prosecutors.
A subsidiary of Avantgarde facilitated the purchase for the Revolutionary Guard of the Grace 1, a ship that was seized by Britain last year on American accusations that it was transporting oil to Syria. Iran denied the allegations and Grace 1 was eventually released. However, the seizure triggered an international stance in which Iran retaliated by seizing a British-flagged ship.
According to the complaint about forgery of assets, an unnamed company invoiced Avantgarde in February for a sum of $ 14.9 million for the sale of the petrol on board the Pandi. Nevertheless, a text message between Madanipour and an unnamed co-conspirator suggest that the trip had encountered difficulties.
“The shipowner does not want to go because of the American threat, but we want him to go, and we agree. We will buy the ship as well,” according to the report, a piece that was included in the complaint.
.
